Putting the car before the horse

Uriah Smith and the Horsey Horseless

One of my favourite places on the internet is the Autoshite.com forum, a little corner of the web where those who appreciate old and unloved cars gather to share their mutual interest. Like all good communities it has its own collection of memes and in-jokes that outsiders wouldn't understand, one of which involves regular mentions of a mythical veteran car called a Horsey Horseless. I had assumed this was something that had been made up by a forum member some time before I joined, but it turns out the Horsey Horseless was a real car - well, sort of: it certainly existed on paper but there is no proof any were actually built.

The only known image of the Horsey Horseless. Would this mutant horse-car fool our equine friends?

Atlas Editions get weirder

My recent article on Atlas Editions and their strange business practices has proved popular and readers generally agree it accurately reflects the truth, but far from persuading them to buck their ideas up, in recent weeks they actually seem to have defied all expectations and got even worse, if such a thing is possible! Instead of learning from criticism like most other companies, they're simply burying their heads in the sand, censoring complaints and pretending all is well, which is a truly bizarre mentality.

R.I.P. Glenn Frey

Just a week after David Bowie's death, another of my musical heroes has passed on. The name Glenn Frey may not mean much by itself to some younger readers, but I guarantee everyone will have heard of his band, the Eagles, and their biggest hit, 'Hotel California', as they are among the greatest of all on the American country-rock scene and have sold simply vast quantities of music over a period of almost 45 years. Even more so than Bowie, the Eagles, both as a band and as solo artists, have had a profound influence on me: they rank among my all-time favourite musicians and have provided the soundtrack to my life through good times and bad ever since I discovered them in my early teens, so Frey's death came as a great shock and I couldn't let it pass unmarked.

The weird world of Atlas Editions

Today's post focuses on a company with the strangest business practices I have ever encountered. You may have heard of Atlas Editions as they advertise extensively; their business model is offering subscriptions to collections of items, principally diecast models but also such other collectables as ornaments and plates, with much emphasis on them being exclusive to Atlas and not available anywhere else, which isn't always true. Each collection begins with a loss leader at a very low price but subsequent goods are more expensive, and they will continue to send items at regular intervals unless you choose to cancel. This all sounds quite reasonable but Atlas often go about their business in strange, disorganised and amateurish ways that have resulted in them not having the best of reputations.

In my favoured 1/76 scale, Atlas have produced a number of collections: Eddie Stobart, Great British Buses, Trams of the World, Fire Engines of the World, the Greatest Show on Earth (funfair and circus vehicles), the World of Stobart, and Classic Coaches. I am personally subscribed to two of these (Greatest Show on Earth and World of Stobart) and my experience so far has been satisfactory, but there is an Atlas Editions Collectors group on Facebook where complaints vastly outnumber positive posts, and numerous threads about the company on consumer advice forums. Read on for more about the weird world of Atlas Editions and their bizarre ways of running a business...

R.I.P. David Bowie

This week got off to a rather shocking start as I woke this morning to the completely unexpected news that David Bowie has passed away. I was reading through my Facebook feed and wondering why so many of my friends were talking about him, then I saw the announcement of his death on his official page and let out a few involuntary profanities, such was the shock. While I wouldn't class myself as a die-hard Bowie fan and there are parts of his work that I don't like, particularly some of the more bizarre material from his later years, I do enjoy listening to the classics and his music has had a great influence on me. It's not an overstatement to say the man was and is a legend: everyone has heard of him and he was very influential over a long period, not just through his music but also for his persona and stagecraft.

Facebook's secret feature change

I'm sure many of you will agree that a lot of the changes Facebook make don't improve the user experience at all, and I have been very critical of them, but for once they have actually made a beneficial change that is genuinely useful and solves a real issue. However, they seem to have neglected to tell anyone about it as the majority of users haven't realised anything has changed and the problematic behaviour it was supposed to prevent is still occurring so I feel more attention needs to be drawn to this change. It affects what happens when you reject a friend request: that person now no longer has the ability to send you another request so you won't be bombarded by those annoying persistent users who keep sending a new request every time you reject one, and this should have put an end to that irritating practice of friend requests being left pending indefinitely.

Jeff Lynne: is he Alone in the Universe?

Record Review: Alone in the Universe by Jeff Lynne's ELO

November 2015 saw the release of Alone in the Universe, the new album by Jeff Lynne, the creative force behind the Electric Light Orchestra, which is the first to bear the ELO name since the disappointing and largely forgotten 2000 album Zoom. After some years in the wilderness, the band have recently come to prominence again as a result of a critically-acclaimed concert for the BBC in Hyde Park during 2014. I am a fairly recent convert to the music of ELO, having heard much of their work without really knowing it was theirs, and have become very fond of their greatest hits compilation, Light Years, so I was curious to find out what Lynne's new music was like and asked for this album as a Christmas present. It isn't entirely what I would have expected from ELO and left me a little disappointed as a result, but is nevertheless an enjoyable little album and a welcome return for one of the greats of the seventies.

Ctrl-Z again!

Just a quick one to vent my frustrations. Remember my angry post about the stupid Ctrl-Z behaviour that deletes the entire text of your work-in-progress post? Even though I now know about this there is a further twist that I've just fallen foul of, resulting in the total loss of a piece that had been at the draft stage for several months and was nearing completion - I can't be bothered to rewrite it all so now it will never be published. What happened is that I once again pressed Ctrl-Z too many times and wiped the text, but knowing I would be snookered once the autosave function ran I immediately pressed close to exit without saving and preserve my work. Sure enough, a message popped up saying "You have unsaved changes that will be lost" so I clicked OK expecting my changes to be discarded and the text to be preserved, but no, it appears to have saved anyway and all my hard work was gone with no way to get it back. It seems you can't win and as soon as you make the fatal mistake of pressing Ctrl-Z your work is as good as gone.

I know people have suggested Blogger posts should be drafted outside of Blogger, e.g. in Microsoft Word, so you have a backup copy, but that really shouldn't be necessary and defeats the point of a cloud service that should provide better safety and availability without needing to keep multiple copies. If I thought for one minute it would make any difference I would be writing a strongly-worded complaint to Google, but sadly this is a company that is not immune from the attitude I so deplore of large IT firms not giving a damn about their users and completely ignoring any criticism. I guess I'll just have to train myself not to use Ctrl-Z in Blogger, but that will be difficult as it is a universal shortcut that I use all the time and works correctly everywhere else, and the proper solution is for Google to remove this behaviour. Beware once again - the power of Ctrl-Z is even mightier than I thought!

The last Healey

As you've probably guessed by now, I am a self-confessed car geek. I pride myself on my knowledge of obscure cars as they are one of the few things in life I am really passionate about, so when I come across something I had never heard of before, curiosity always gets the better of me and I have to find out all about it. As my first car was a Mark 1 Ford Fiesta I naturally have a sentimental attraction to them and it always pleases me to see one, but surely everyone knows what a Fiesta is and it can hardly be considered even remotely obscure. How many of you are aware however that the Mark 1 was sold in the USA and along the way has a surprising connection with a famous British sports car manufacturer? I certainly wasn't until I recently stumbled across the car in question...

A Ford Fiesta but not as we know it